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St George Central is a two-councillor ward.
Abi Finch and Cara Lavan are your local Green councillors, having won their seats in the May 2024 elections.
Cara Lavan was delighted to be elected as Councillor for St George Central in May 2024 alongside Abi Finch. Cara's other Council responsibilities include sitting on the Public Health and Communities Committee, the Police and Crime Panel, the Corporate Parenting Panel and the Health Overview Scrutiny Committee.
More about CaraCouncillor Abi Finch is the Chair of the Environment and Sustainability Committee
More about Abi
There have been some changes in Bristol City Council, so we wanted to give you an update on our new roles and what we’ll be working on. Alongside being your ward councillors and supporting and representing you, we both hold other roles.
Last month was the council’s Annual General Meeting where our roles are agreed for the year ahead. One big change is that Abi has now taken on the role of Chair of the Environment and Sustainability Committee. This is the committee that oversees the council’s response to the climate and ecological emergencies, residential waste and recycling collections and the council’s approach to fly-tipping and street cleansing. One of Abi’s priorities for the new role is updating the council’s approach to waste and resources with a focus on tackling the causes of fly-tipping and encouraging more reuse and repair.
To make time for the new role Abi has stepped down from chairing our Area Committee, where local funding decisions are made for the wider St George area. She has also stepped down from the Public Rights of Way and Greens committee, the decision making body for dedicating new public rights of way and town/village greens. Abi is still very much committed to supporting St George Central residents, but the new Chair role will take up a large chunk of her time and there’s a lot to learn to get settled into the role, so your patience whilst she gets up to speed is very much appreciated.
Cara continues to sit on the Public Health and Communities Committee which oversees things like health commissioning, sports and leisure, community cohesion parks, allotments, cemeteries, libraries and environmental health. She also sits on the Police and Crime Panel, which meets regularly in Taunton. She attends the Combatting Drugs Partnership and continues to work to promote life-saving harm reduction measures alongside the need for drug law reform.
She has taken a lead on allotments and works closely with the Bristol Allotment Forum.
Cara has just stepped back from two years on the Corporate Parenting Panel, which scrutinises how the city looks after children in the care system, in order to be able to take over the role of chairing our Area Committee. In addition, Cara is in her third year as Deputy Leader of the Green Councillor group and still works part time as a film maker and child advocate.
We hope that gives you a flavour of what we’re up to in our wider councillor roles alongside our local work with individuals and communities in the ward.
May 2026 is the two-year anniversary of the Council’s change to a committee system under a Green-led administration. It’s also two years since we’ve had the privilege to be your local councillors. As Green Council Leader Tony Dyer said when we delivered the 2026/27 budget for the city, we have been “making sure we get the basics right while also investing in Bristol’s future”.
As your local councillors, we’ve been working solidly to understand and meet as many needs as possible.
This year’s budget will invest over £850m into the city; delivering core services for children and adults, providing decent affordable homes, enabling safer and better transport, protecting our environment, looking after our children in care and creating improved educational performance.
Some of our citywide highlights include bringing our council housing stock up to scratch by getting long overdue repairs completed, protecting the library service, investing to explore re-opening public toilets, putting additional funds into dealing with fly tipping, protecting the cultural investment programme, over-seeing the roll out of lamp post EV charging points, shortening waiting times for pedestrians at crossings, opening a youth hub and a new school for children with additional needs.
In 2025 we built more affordable homes than any other city outside London. We are also one of the only Councils in the country to provide a Council Tax Reduction Scheme, which supports those least able to pay their bills.
Under Green leadership, the Council’s planning department has been taken out of special measures and we are investing £300,000 in recruiting more planning enforcement officers to keep developments within the conditions of their planning approval.
We know all of this is important to our residents.
Over the next two years we will invest in improving recycling with better processing facilities and supplying improved recycling containers to households.
There isn’t enough space here to address all the work we’ve been doing, and we do know that there are things that still need work, such as the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood low traffic scheme.
Locally, we’ve held a regular monthly surgery, answered hundreds of emails from residents, reported more potholes and fly tipping hot spots that either of us thought possible and attended community groups and meetings of all descriptions. We are currently also undertaking a ward wide survey on parking.
We are loving getting to know the area and the residents more deeply.
Our May surgery will be on the 13th, 2:30-4pm at the Meadow Vale Community Centre small hall and the two new local PCSO’s for the area, Chloe and April will attend to hold a joint surgery with us. So if you have any queries or concerns about crime in our area, do please come along.
Short Reel Showing some of Cllr Cara Lavan and Cllr Abi Finch’s 2025 activities
Cara and Abi take great pride in being very active and engaged councillors – so much so, that they often forget to document everything they do. This reel was made at the end of 2025 as a bit of a fun catch up.